Sixty years ago an attorney here in Freeport wrote and published a most unusual history of one of Stephenson County’s earliest settlements. The content of the book is in a class of its own.

The village of Kent was the stomping grounds of the late Phillip Keister as he was growing up. But let me tell you, Mr. Keister had to have spent uncountable hours digging out all the stuff he included in his book, “Kent for a Century and a Quarter.” It is about the village founded in 1835, about the same time as Freeport’s founding.

It is both factual and earthy. Now Keister is remembered — by some of us at least — as a serious-minded reserved man. But he really took this mission to heart. He worked on it for 20 years. He also put out some other books on area history and was executive editor of the “History of Stephenson County 1970” serving with the late Mary X. Barrett as editor.

Published in 1952, the book about Kent is filled with meticulous information, with hundreds of family names and accounts of their occupations, photos of their homes, etc., of all those who settled in the little village in western Stephenson County. Keister had only a relatively few volumes of his work published, but some years back the Stephenson County Genealogical Society had a quantity of them reprinted.

Branches for Family Trees

Never mind all that. It’s the quality of the information Keister gleaned for it that is so amazing. He included the nuts and bolts, flaws and warts and all. Keister includes in his narrative the fiber of those early pioneers. He had to have talked to the old-timers among whom were his family, his neighbors, his friends and maybe even those he overheard in the village store or granary. And he dug into archives and county, church, cemetery and school records. It is so flabbergastingly thorough. Countless family names still around throughout the county are encountered throughout the book. People seeking their roots would find it most interesting. Those folks ferreting out their own family trees would be behooved to include it in their search. The local history room at Freeport Public Library has several copies of the book in its stacks.

Keister’s narrative is realistic, frank, funny and flavorful, but there is one long section describing every house in town, who lived there and information about them. Of course, being an attorney, he knew his way around the court house.

Keister grew up in the Kent area so must have heard the stories told over and over again by his kinfolk, neighbors and friends, and he must have worn out a lot of shoe leather tracking it all down. Keister had only a small number of the books printed thinking the market for a book about a small village would have a limited following. And he may have been right. But we have to say that the very number of names, family names that are still prevalent today make the volume a valuable resource for those seeking family history.

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There are amazingly 75 double-columned pages of individuals’ alphabetized names of those early settlers in the village of Kent located northwest of Pearl City not far from the Stephenson County line.

The Meat of the Book

The pioneer period of settlement in Kent began in 1835 and continued into the 1850s, Keister wrote. They settled along Yellow Creek. In 1839 and ’40 the “tide of Pennsylvania Dutch started to roll in.” They brought with them only the bare necessities. They looked for land with timber and a good spring, and they needed enough ground to raise wheat for flour and plant a garden.

A mill was of course the first structure built on Yellow Creek. They had to eat. Galena was the nearest trading town, but as Keister explained, the farmers had little to trade and having shelter, keeping food on the table and clothing to wear had to be their first concerns. They first built a shelter to cover their heads. They bought only salt and sugar and that contingent on when they could. It was pretty slim pickings for them at first.

The first marriage in the settlement was James Blair and Kate March. This was the second license issued in Freeport, Keister learned. The first birth was Harvey Timms born May 26, 1837. James Willets Jr. was the first to die and was buried in the Yellow Creek Cemetery at one time called the Willets Burying Ground.

By 1840, the tide of immigration was well under way to Northern Illinois and lands were surveyed and opened for sale in 1844 at the new land office in Dixon. Among those early settlers were those with surnames of Carter, Rand, Bailey, Gable, MacGinnis, Pitcher, Lathrop, Boyer, Bogenrief, Keister and Boop.

They couldn’t build schools and churches yet for lack of materials. Those came a bit later.

The Railroads Came

Classic stories arose with the arrival of the railroads. In one instance a group of fellows just happened to borrow a railroad handcar at night when no one was looking. They were going to ride up to Stockton for a little entertainment.

However they were soon caught, their handcar retrieved by the railroad and the boys left to walk the miles back home.

There being no crossing signals and the grain growing close to the tracks, there were a number of train wrecks and collisions. Keister tells of several fatal disasters from people taking risks. There is a whole section on railroad wrecks at Kent. Keister narrates the railroad story from start to finish.

As the people settled in, organizations of various sorts began to be formed. The social life was taking hold. The Grange, an agriculture organization, was one of the first to be organized. There were businesses taking root, like general stores, feed and grain, blacksmiths and stables. People in Kent read the “Lena Star” newspaper which often carried Kent news. The Sunday school convention held in Kent in the 1870s was covered.

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Early Crime in Kent

Most of the early crime in the village consisted of burglary at the post office, Parkinson’s restaurant and Art Studebaker’s store. Constable John Kleckner caught them though.

One catchy item tells of a drunken man in town who “one morning last week made himself quite offensive at A. Studebaker’s store. ‘Studie’ took him and locked him in his barn until his ‘jag’ cooled off, when he took off for Pearl City to fill up again.”

In another crime, “thieves visited Dan Baker’s house and with a long pole succeeded in fishing Mr. Baker’s pants out of the window just as he woke up. Mr. Baker followed them but too late. They secured $13 in money and a good pair of pants.”

The history of Kent goes into many different aspects of the Kent early days. It is an entertaining read. You might just want to visit the library one of these days and read some of it yourself. I’ll bet somewhere up there, Mr. Keister would be delighted if you did.

Harriett Gustason is a columnist for The Journal-Standard. She can be reached at hg3855@comcast.net